Don't Fail Me Now(19)

“Leah Devereaux,” I type instead, holding my breath. Three profiles pop up, but two are way too old, and the last, very promising one, a super cute black teen with glasses, lives in Ontario. “Tim Harper,” I try, and even though I get eight names this time, I recognize him immediately. First of all, he’s listed as “Timothy,” which definitely fits with his wannabe-yuppie vibe, and he’s the only one who’s wearing something other than a wifebeater or suit and tie. I click on his photo, in which he’s leaning on a wooden fence with some kind of livestock in the background, and scan his page. His posts and all but his profile and cover photo are private, but he’s listed as a student at McDonogh, which is a swanky private school outside the city. And under “Family” there are three people: Jeff Harper, Karen Harper, and . . . Leah D. Harper. Bingo.

I click on my long-lost half sister’s face, feeling what I know is a very modern sense of dread. A century ago, you could probably have a secret sibling and never know about it as long as they didn’t live next door or write you some kind of confessional letter while they were dying of polio. Now the news never turns off, the Internet is forever, and anyone under the age of seventy is probably in your face on at least four separate types of social media. I never looked for Leah because I didn’t know her name until today, but a part of me knew it was only a matter of time before one of us found the other.

Immediately, two things become clear: one, that Leah D. Harper has abandoned her Facebook page—the last update is from 2013—and two, that she’s . . . white. Really white. The-color-of-tracing-paper white, with blonde hair even lighter than Tim’s. I don’t know why this is such a shock, considering that we share the same sperm donor, who is also white, but it is. It shatters the image of her I’ve had in my head all these years. I always pictured her looking like me.

Leah is white because Karen, her mother and the woman Buck left us for, is also white. That much is obvious from Leah’s publicly available cover photo, a family portrait set in front of a big (also white) clapboard house. Everyone is wearing pastel and smiling toothpaste-commercial smiles. Polly Devereaux would have approved. Maybe she even had a hand in it, offering her son something more than a new car this time in a final push to rid her family tree of its thorny branch of jungle fever.

My chest feels tight, and I realize I’m not breathing. Stop it, I think, as I coax the stale, ash-scented air back into my lungs. But it’s too late; I’m desperate for more, needing to scratch this scab until it bleeds. I open a new browser window and pull up Instagram, searching for her name. There are more profiles to wade through this time, but now that I know what she looks like, I find her pretty quickly, under the username leah__butterfly. By a huge stroke of dumb luck and lax parental controls, the account is public, and I click through the most recent photos, each one a cruel funhouse mirror image of a life I never stood a chance of having: “mall trip with mom!!!!” (Leah and Karen—a plump, pretty redhead—clinking milkshake glasses); “<3 <3 <3 love my besties!!! xoxoxox” (Leah, looking like a Barbie doll flanked by two swarthier friends, all three with matching pink streaks in their hair); “spring break J J yessss finally lol!!!!!” (fuchsia-painted toes anchoring a tropical beach panorama). Her social media presence on this site is the opposite of hiding in a car, and I suddenly realize that if I’m shocked she’s white, she might be shocked I’m not. Tim certainly seemed surprised that I was me, at first. I cringe retroactively at his wide-eyed stare back at the Taco Bell counter.

When I was ten and Cass was six, during the scary times before Denny was conceived, we started making up stories about our third sister, taking turns imagining her out loud as we drifted off to sleep—where she lived (Florida), what she looked like (like us, but also like Beyoncé), the nonsensical adventures she had that always ended in the three of us joining forces to fight off villains and save the day. A few years later I found out that this storytelling technique—taking turns to craft something whole—is called exquisite corpse, which gave me chills not only because that’s a creepy-ass game name but also because that’s exactly what Leah was: a nameless, faceless, exquisite corpse that we felt safe animating only because we were convinced she would never come to life on her own. Until now.

I land on a photo labeled “bro time” with four different emoji. It’s a selfie with Tim in which Leah’s sticking out her tongue Miley Cyrus–style, but he thinks it’s a normal photo. His lack of pretense, compared to her posturing, is weirdly endearing. But he’s not your real brother, I think, swallowing a sudden swell of jealousy, sharp as a shard of glass. He’s not your blood. I am.

“What are you doing?”

I spin around to find Cass standing in the doorway, hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie, Mom’s old purple sweatpants—a wearable security blanket we’ve passed back and forth over the years—almost covering her toes.

“You scared me,” I say, closing the laptop in a deliberately slow way that I hope comes off as casual. “I thought you were—”

“Auntie Dearest?” Cass deadpans. “Nah, don’t worry, she’s still at the hospital terrorizing sick people.”

I shake my head. “Ugh, can you imagine what it’s like to be one of her patients?” And seamlessly, Cass juts out a hip and cocks an eyebrow, curling her lip into a surly sneer.